Hal 9000 and AI

Chapter 12 Hal 9000 and AI Hal 9000, an intelligent computer system, plays an important part in the novel “2001: A Space Odyssey” written by Arthor Clark, published for the first time in 1968. This novel was later made into a film, directed by Stanley Kubrick, also in 1968. The following figure shows the eyes of Hal 9000. 1 What is the story? Below is a much simplified plot summary of this film, emphasizing the role played by Hal 9000: “When the world is ruled by apes, one particular group discovers a mysterious rectangular monolith near their home. Astronaut David Bowman, along with four companions, sets off for Jupiter on a spaceship controlled by HAL 9000, a revolutionary computer system that is every bit mankind’s equal, and perhaps his superior. When HAL endangers the crew’s lives for the sake of the mission, Bowman will have to first overcome the computer, then travel to the birthplace of the monolith.” 2 What does Hal 9000 do? The following is a scenario as depicted in the novel, where Hal 9000 tries to take control of the spaceship: “Hal, switch to manual hibernation control.” Question: How does Hal 9000 understand Dave’s command? What kind of ability should Hal possess to distinguish different people’s voice? “I can tell from your voice harmonics, Dave, that you’re badly upset. Why don’t you take a stress pill and get some rest?” Question: How can Hall 9000 tell Dave is upset from the harmonics of his voice? Moreover, now can Hal make the prescription for Dave? 3 “Hal, I am in command of this ship. I order you to release the manual hibernation control.” Question: How does Hal tell the difference between “order” and “request”? “I’m sorry, Dave, but in accordance with special subroutine C1435-dash-4, quote, When the crew are dead or inca- pacitated, the onboard computer must assume control, unquote. I must, there- fore, overrule your authority, since you are not in any condition to exercise it intelligently.” Question: What is “C1435-dash-4”? How does Hal remember its content? How does Hal find such a special routine that is immediately applicable? Is the reasoning that Hal just made sound? Is it rule based? 4 “Hal,” said Bowman, now speaking with an icy calm. “I am not incapac- itated. Unless you obey my instruc- tions, I shall be forced to disconnect you.” Question: Can Hal tell the “icy” tone of Bow- man? “I know you have had that on your mind for some time now, Dave, but that would be a terrible mistake. I am so much more capable than you are of supervising the ship, and I have such enthusiasm for the mission and confi- dence in its success.” Question: How can Hal know that Bowman has this tough in his mind for a while? How does Hal rich the conclusion that Bowman might make a terrible mistake? Will you do the same? 5 “Listen to me very carefully, Hal. Un- less you release the hibernation control immediately and follow every order I give from now on, I’ll go to Central and carry out a complete disconnection.” Hal’s surrender was as total as it was unexpected. “O.K., Dave,” he said. “You’re certainly the boss. I was only trying to do what I thought best. Nat- urally, I will follow all your orders. You now have full manual hibernation control.” Question: What is the Achilles heel of Hal 9000? Is this really fatal to Hal 9000? What happens if he carries battery? How do we control such a powerful companion if the need arises? 6 Hal 9000’s ability It is obvious that Hal 9000 is able to “listen”, “think”, and “talk” to people in real time, an “intelligent agent”, just like us. On the other hand, Hal is man made. Thus, we call such an entity a one with artificial intelligence. All these capabilities were mostly pure science fiction. Indeed, back in 1966, two years prior to the publication of this novel, researchers Bhi- mani, B., Merrill, R., Mitchell, R., and Stark, M., suggested that a person sitting at a desk, by means of a small digitizer and a telephone, could communicate with a database on a mainframe. 7 What is AI? Roughtly speaking, Artificial Intelligence is in- tended to understand, and build, intelligent entities. AI has produced many interesting and important results. But, it used to be difficult. For example, in the 1960’s, on then a very powerful IBM 360 mainframe, an analysis of a sample required 85 seconds for each second of the voice sample being translated, too slow to help Hal to communicate with his human colleagues in real time. 8 We have achieved quite a bit.... We have made quite a progress along this line: speech recognition and synthesis, e.g., the Siri system equipped with IPhone 4S; logic reasoning and/or planning, e.g., IBM Deep Blue; machine learning, e.g., IBM Watson system; intelligent agents, e.g., automatic vehicle. For example, in the Third DARPA Grand Chal- lenge took place on November 3, 2007, an au- tonomous vehicle built by a CMU Racing Team completed the 55 mile course in an Urban set- ting, Victorville, California, in about four hours and won a USD 2M prize. Let’s have a look.... 9 Why are we interested in AI? With AI, we want to study how it is possible for a brain to perceive, understand, predict, and then manipulate the world, which is much larger and complicated than itself. A much more difficult question is that, if we understand such a process, how could we build something with these features? With its fast speed and big memory, Comput- ers provide an ideal platform for us to test out our assumptions and realize our dreams. 10 Both the newest and the oldest AI is one of the newest discipline. It was for- mally initiated in the mid 1950’s. Although it has accomplished quite a bit, there is still a long way to go. On the other hand, the study of intelligence is also one of the oldest. For 2,000 years, philosophers have tried to understand how see- ing, learning, remembering, and reasoning, could, as well as should, be done. The emergence of computers in the early 1950’s made speculations into a real experimental and theoretical science. 11 Computer and AI With its huge memory and stunning speed, be- sides providing a vehicle for creating artificial intelligence entities, the computer also pro- vides a tool for testing theories of intelligence, many of which could not stand the test, just like many of the physics theories. AI currently consists of many sub-fields. From such general areas as logic reasoning, to some very specific ones, such as playing chess. Many scientists of other areas often move into AI, where they find the theories and tools that systemize what they have been doing for a long time; while AI workers may choose to apply their methods to any area of human intelligence. 12 Various perspectives There are various definitions of artificial intelligence. Some of them emphasize more on the thought process and reasoning; while others emphasize on the behavior. Another angle is that if it tries to character- ize human performance; or some ideal performance, i.e., if it always does the right thing, or, rationally. Thus, there could be four approaches, which have all been followed. A human-centered approach must be an experimental one, involving assumptions, and experimental confirmations; while a rationalist approach involves a combi- nation of mathematics and engineering. 13 Turing (1912-1954) proposed a test to provide an operational definition of intelligence, when he defined intelligent behavior as the ability to achieve human-level performance in all cognitive tasks, sufficient to fool an interrogator. More specifically, a human interrogator asks questions to, and get answers from, two sources, one is controlled by a computer, the other by a human being, without knowing which is which. If the interrogator cannot distinguish the sources based on the answers, then we may say the compute exhibits sufficiently human intelligence to pass the Turing test. What does it take to pass? The Loebner Prize, that started in 1990, is an annual competition that awards prizes to the Chatterbot considered by the judges to be the most human-like among the competitors. The format of the competition is that of a standard Turing test. The 2010 Loebner Prize Competition in Arti- ficial Intelligence was held on October 23 at California State University, Los Angeles. with the top prize of $3,000 and a bronze medal. To pass such a test, a computer would have to possess such abilities as natural language pro- cessing, knowledge representation, automated reasoning, and machine learning. Who won the Loebner Test this year? 14 Think humanly: Cognitive modeling Following this approach, we have to set up a theory on human being’s thinking first by studying our own thinking process, or via psy- chological experiments. Then, we have to express the theory as a computer program. If the program’s I/O and tim- ing behavior match with the real thing, we will have some evidence that some of the program’s mechanisms may also be operating in humans. 15 The filed of cognitive science brings together computer models of AI and experimental tech- niques of Psychology to construct precise and testable models of the workings of human mind.

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